Yet an insurmountable difficulty in the way of complete observance of the law lay in the necessity for considering the demands of two widely separated points of view, one in the line of approach to the Propylaea, the other within the portico. A glance at the plan of the Propylaea (Fig. 4) shows that lines drawn from the axis of the straight roadway at its lower end to the door jambs of the Pinakotheke cut two columns unequally. The line to the left side of the door is tangent to one column, the line to the right side cuts deeply into the other. If the door had been placed with reference solely to the view from the last stretch of the zigzag road, it ought to stand farther to the west. That it does not so stand must be due to the fact that the architect sought likewise to provide for the view of the observer who approached the Pinakotheke from behind the hexastyle. It is necessary to emphasize the fact that the passage back of the hexastyle was the normal means of access to the Pinakotheke. The position of the east window in the middle of its wall space would be quickly, if unconsciously felt by the observer, with the result that the asymmetry of the wall as a whole would not be noticed. Had the normal access to the wing been from directly in front, between the first and second columns (counting from the east), the fact that the windows were not equidistant from the door would have been readily recognized, but, as it is, the observer who entered the portico in the regular way at the east end saw directly in front of him a wall space pierced by a centrally placed window. If the door had been placed farther west, this advantage would have been lost.
If the zigzag approach we have indicated be correct, it follows that the Pinakotheke was designed also for an observer who stood at the beginning of the straight road through the portal, where it would have produced a unified effect with the general structure.
| Figure 2 | Figure 3 |
| The Pinakotheke as seen from the base of the Nike bastion. At left, the pedestal of the monument to Agrippa | The Pinakotheke as seen from a point
near the axis of the roadway through the Propylaea |
It will be readily seen that if the S.W. wing, which was never completed, had been built as an exact counterpart of the N.W. wing, the three parts would have been designed to be seen from a common point at the beginning of the straight road through the portal, and the structure though tripartite would have been a symmetrical unit. Professor Dörpfeld (Ath. Mitt., 1885, p. 45 ff.) has shown that the architect planned at one time a south-west wing with a colonnade instead of a closed west wall, and that the present curtailed wing could have been incorporated in the wing as planned, if permission had ever been given to encroach upon adjacent sanctuaries. There is, of course, no gainsaying that a colonnade was at one time projected for the west side of the wing, but does this fact in any wise exclude the possibility of a still earlier plan? The only reason given by Prof. Dörpfeld for the colonnade is that access might be had to the Nike temple. But a closed wall in place of the colonnade would not have made the temple inaccessible so long as there remained at the north-west corner of the wing the steps which afforded a far more convenient approach to the temple for those coming up to the Acropolis. Indeed, it seems quite possible that the architect, Mnesicles, originally planned a south-west wing (Stuart & Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, II, V, Pl. III) exactly like the north-west wing, but that he was compelled to give it up, that his compromise of a colonnade was also rejected, and that he had to content himself with the curtailed form in which the wing now exists, but that he so placed the back wall of the chamber that it might ultimately be incorporated in a wing with a colonnade on the west side.
There is, moreover, some reason to suspect that the architect was hostile to the idea of having a temple on the bastion. The Propylaea and the temple are obviously not features of a harmonious structural plan. The Propylaea as the crowning gateway of the acropolis demanded an unobstructed outlook toward the west. The presence of the little temple obstructs that outlook. When one learns that the senate voted the construction of the temple in, or shortly before, 446 B.C., (Ἐφ. Ἀρχ., 1897, p. 179), that is, at a time when we fairly assume that the Periclean building plans for the acropolis were about ready, he is justified in suspecting that a conservative religious party sought permanently to thwart the builders in their disregard of sanctuaries by placing a temple to Athena Nike on the bastion. That the opposition of the priesthood[2] checked completely the intention of Pericles and his architects is shown by the fact that foundations were never laid for the walls which would have stood either in the precinct of Artemis Brauronia, or in that of Athena Nike.
The most suggestive chapter in the struggle between priest and architect is the last. When the architect was forced to abandon the idea of building a colonnade, he hoped that he could extend the south wall of the wing 30 cm. west of its present position so as to align it with the third column of the north colonnade. The evidence for this is the poros blocks under the floor of the wing which project just far enough west to have supported a pavement of marble slabs terminating at the western side of the column (see the photograph in Jb. Arch. Inst., 1906, p. 139). These blocks were never intended to serve as a step, for in that case marble would have been used. Had the pavement and anta reached 30 cm. farther, a pier of necessary diameter could have been erected between the anta and the third column of the north façade, and the architrave above the pier could then have been of the same width as that of the north colonnade. But even this slight concession was denied; the western line of the wing was forced back; a unique pier had to be built and a narrow architrave placed upon it (Bohn, op. cit., Taf. XVI). Even the poros blocks where they encroached on the precinct appear to have been hacked away.
In the Propylaea itself, there survives some suggestion of the real attitude of the architect toward the Nike temple and its bastion. The crepidoma of the south-west wing terminates in an anta which was intended to stand free (Arch. Zeit., 1880, p. 86; Jb. Arch. Inst., 1906, p. 136, fig. 3): "Dass dieser Pfeiler in Form einer Anta gebildet ist, d.h. nach Nord und Süd um ein wenig vorspringt, beweist dass hier ursprünglich ein selbständiger Abschluss geplant war, genau wie an der Nordhalle." The objection of Wolters (Bonner Studien, p. 95) does not invalidate Bohn's conclusion. The former assumes that the blocks for the two corresponding antae were ordered by the architect without his specifying for which anta the several blocks were intended. Since the blocks are of different height, it seems safe to infer that the stone-cutter knew exactly the place of each. Another important fact is that the anta in question inclines 3 cm. to the west. Dörpfeld who publishes this valuable observation in Ath. Mitt., 1911, p. 55, says: "Für das Ende einer Mauer ist ein Überneigen des oberen Teiles nach aussen ganz unerhört. Wir dürfen also mit Sicherheit behaupten dass die beiden Seitenwände des Vorplatzes der Propyläen nicht beendet sind, sondern nach dem Plane des Mnesikles weiter nach Westen als Marmorwände mit mindestens je einer zweiten Ante fortgeführt werden sollten. Im Süden sollten die beiden Parastaden augenscheinlich die Treppe zum Nike-Tempel einfassen, im Norden sollten sie vermutlich eine Tür bilden, die zu dem westlich von der Pinakothek befindlichen tief liegenden Raume führte."
The inference from Professor Dörpfeld's important observation is that the anta was intended to carry a lintel or an architrave reaching west. The question is just how much of the bastion was to be removed to make room for this extension. The readiness of the architect to encroach upon the precinct of the temple warrants the answer that the whole bastion was to be removed. The anta, as Bohn says, was built to stand free like its counterpart at the N.W. wing. The character of the extension remains a matter of conjecture. Perhaps a colonnade was contemplated.